Home projects in Highland and northwest Denver

Highland was its own town before it was a Denver neighborhood. The Denver Public Library's history notes that the Town of Highlands struggled with services and, after the 1893 Silver Crash strained its finances, its citizens voted in 1896 to annex to Denver. You can still see that older town in the Victorian cottages, Queen Anne houses and brick commercial blocks on the hill above downtown.

You can also see what came after. Since the 2000s, northwest Denver (Highland, LoHi, West Highland, Sloan's Lake and Sunnyside) has seen a wave of new duplexes, row homes and modern single-family houses on scraped lots. Owners here fall into two groups with very different projects: people restoring and updating century-old homes, and people maintaining or customizing new attached homes.

Landmark districts in northwest Denver

Denver's list of local landmark districts includes several in this part of the city, such as Potter Highlands, Witter-Cofield and Packard's Hill, along with the Old Highland Business district. If your property is in one, exterior work that needs a permit requires Landmark Preservation review before the permit is issued, and the e-permits system won't process it online.

For roofs, Denver allows a re-roof using the same material, including size, shape, color and exposure, to be approved by staff through Landmark Quick Review. Changing materials, adding skylights or solar on a street-facing slope, replacing windows or altering porches typically goes through standard review. Build that into your schedule and get approval before you sign a final contract.

Older homes: what to expect

Victorian-era houses in Highland tend to have:

• Rubble stone or brick foundations and partial basements or crawl spaces. Before a basement finish or bathroom addition, have someone assess moisture and the foundation's condition.
• Complex roofs with turrets, steep gables and built-in gutters that are expensive to re-roof and easy to flash badly.
• Wood siding and trim under layers of paint, which in pre-1978 homes means lead-safe work by an EPA-certified renovation firm.
• Undersized electrical service and old wiring that limit kitchen remodels and heat pump conversions.

Small footprints make kitchen and bath remodels the usual projects. Pop-tops and rear additions are common too, though in landmark districts any addition is reviewed for how it relates to the historic house.

Newer attached homes: shared walls and permits

If you own one side of a duplex or a row home, two rules shape your projects.

First, Denver's homeowner permit path doesn't apply to you. The city says homeowners cannot get permits for work in ADUs, townhomes, condos or duplexes, even the unit they live in. Any permitted work, from a basement finish to a new circuit, needs a Denver-licensed contractor.

Second, shared roofs, walls and landscaping are often governed by a declaration or party-wall agreement. A roof replacement on half a duplex needs to tie into the neighbor's roof properly, and many associations require matching materials and colors. Coordinate with your neighbor; replacing both halves at once is often cheaper and avoids a seam that leaks.

Common projects on newer homes include rooftop deck repairs and resealing, adding cooling capacity to hot top floors, finishing basements the builder left raw, and fixing hail damage to the large flat or low-slope roof sections many modern designs use.

Hail and roofing contracts

Northwest Denver gets the same hail as the rest of the metro. Colorado's roofing contract law requires roofers to give you a written contract that includes, among other terms, a rescission clause letting you cancel and get a full refund of any deposit within 72 hours after signing. Roofers can't pay or waive your insurance deductible. If someone knocks on your door after a storm, take their card, check their Denver contractor license, and get other bids.

A sensible order of operations

For an older Highland house, work from the outside in and the bottom up. Fix drainage and gutters so water moves away from an old foundation, then repair or replace the roof, then tackle electrical capacity, and only then finish interiors. For new attached homes, start with the documents: your declaration, any party-wall agreement and the builder's warranty, which may still cover some defects on younger houses. Either way, confirm landmark status and zoning before you design, and keep every approval letter with your permit records. A buyer's inspector will ask for them when you sell.